Big City Mayors Ban Purchasing from North Carolina and Mississippi

Just when some in North Carolina - and now Mississippi - are probably wondering what additional threat can slam their state in the wake of Republicans enacting heinous anti-LGBT laws, a number of big city mayors have announced that they are banning taxpayer funded purchases of goods from those states.  This is on top of bans by many of the same cities and a half dozen or more states that have banned employee travel to North Carolina and Mississippi.  Let's hope the economic pain these hate embracing states suffer is severe indeed.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at this latest shoe to drop against Christofascist/Republican extremism.  Here are highlights:

Ten mayors from some of the nation's largest cities will ban the use of taxpayer funds not only for official travel to North Carolina and Mississippi, but ban the use of taxpayer funds to purchase goods and services from companies located in those two states. The boycott is a direct response to governors in North Carolina and Mississippi signing into law legislation that discriminates against LGBT people. The mayors have joined together to create a new group, Mayors Against Discrimination.

Truly a nationwide effort, the founding members of the group are New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (photo), Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf.

"Some are trying to turn back the clock to a deeply flawed time in our history," Mayor de Blasio said, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 

"By joining together in this effort, we are creating a coalition of mayors across the country to combat discrimination of any kind and to protect civil rights everywhere," Mayor Murray added.

The group will also "develop model resolutions that can be adopted by city councils and other legislative bodies, and other measures that mayors and cities can take individually and collectively," The Bay Area Reporter reports. 

They say they will also "work with private sector leaders and companies, like Marc Benioff from Salesforce, Wells Fargo, Starbucks and hundreds of others to apply direct political and economic pressure to repeal or stop the alarming spread of discriminatory laws in the United States."